


the sex pact

by dicksargents (BlondeTate)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (and bisexual adam but that's all but canon), Explicit Language, F/M, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Multi, No Curse, Sexual Content, Underage Sex, a sex pact kind of, alternative universe, and noah/matthew but that's probably going to be minimal, asexual sex neutral noah, basically everyone getting it on with everyone, bisexual gansey, but the romance is bluesey and pynch, group edition, in other words what the fuck am i even doing with my life, no magic, no sleeping kings, probably not a kavinsky friendly story either, who knows not me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 10:15:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4662840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlondeTate/pseuds/dicksargents
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So she did not love them in the romantic way; the way, she suspected, Maura meant the word “love.” So it was only a convenient friends with benefits arrangement, magnified to five people instead of two. Blue didn’t mind. In fact, she rather enjoyed having all the benefits of four sexual partners she could trust and none of the complications of a romantic entanglement. It was, she thought, one of the best decisions she’s made in her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Rules

**The Rules**  
as negotiated and established by Blue Sargent, Adam Parrish, Ronan N. Lynch, Noah Czerny and Richard C. Campbell III

  1. Do not keep secrets from your ~~fuck buddies~~ friends _with benefits_
  2. jealousy is unwanted
  3. dont be picky about who u fuck
  4. no is always an okay answer _yeah and don’t explain yourself_
  5. safe sex _ALWAYS!!!_
  6. dont bring others into this its just the 5 of us
  7. be open about what you like and don’t like _respect those boundaries_
  8. this is not a relationship _dont have expectations of a relationship_
  9. absolutely no fucking cuddling
  10. no sleepovers either
  11. no feelings involved
  12. keep this a secret _STRICTLY!_
  13. Any of us is free to leave the arrangement any time they wish
  14. Blue’s bonus rule: no kissing _applies only to her kissing is optional_



 

Blue Sargent

Adam Parrish

Ronan Lynch

Noah Czerny

Richard Campbell Gansey III

 

April 25, 2015


	2. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the rating, for now, is mature only but that might (and probably will?) change to explicit as the story progresses. i might change the title too if i figure out something better...

During the seventeen years of Blue Sargent’s life, her mother had never been negligent to share her wisdom with Blue about relationships and men and women alike. She had a fine eye for detail and an authentic understanding of the mechanisms of the human mind, but for her eccentricity and heresy, her advice were often vastly unhelpful or perplexing or simply too specific to be of any use for anyone.

When Blue was six, her mother, Maura, told her to shove or kick any boy who pulled her pigtails. It was an advice Blue approved of, but also one that earned her weeks of detention, the nickname “Blue, the bully”, and angry parents threatening to sue the school if she was not suspended. (It wasn’t her fault stupid Billy Harmon tripped on his own feet after she kicked him, falling on the hard concrete and injuring his head. She was sorry the ambulance had to come to take him away and sorry no one wanted to befriend her after the incident, but not sorry she kicked him in the shin. Somebody had to teach him a lesson.)

When she was eight, the advice she got was “Don’t tell him about your kid until the third date.” At ten it was, “Don’t get involved with people surrounded by dark auras” and then “If she wears too much white, just leave,” and “If he doesn't like tea, he’s not a keeper.”

Blue didn’t always understand the reasoning behind her mother’s strange advice but she didn’t question it. She did receive a handful of useful ones among the cluster of oddities, like “Don’t let him or her define you” or “Don’t let them pay for you on a date.” Calla, one of her mother’s best friends and Blue’s unofficial foster mom, taught her self-defense when she reached the age twelve and gave her pepper spray to keep with her at all times. Persephone, her mom’s other friend, taught her how to bake apple pie and when they were covered in flour (Blue, at least - Persephone’s long white mane, porcelain skin and frothy dress was spotless) and waiting for the timer to go off, she said, in her usual tiny, expressive voice, “Don’t bake apple pies for those who aren’t worth it,” and somehow, it sounded like a very important thing to remember.

Most recently, Maura told her, in her very blunt and straightforward way, to save her virginity for someone she loved.

“Losing your virginity isn’t trendy,” she said between sips of a drink that could have been anything ranging from grapefruit juice to early afternoon cocktails. Knowing her mother, it was probably the latter. “Teenagers are inherently curious about sex at this age but your first time should be special.”

She paused, squinted at the whiteness of the ceiling, recalling something far away. She took another sip of the unidentified drink and grimaced; either at the taste or the memory or both. “Trust me on this. You don’t want to look back twenty years later and regret it. Or worse, not even remember it.” She gestured wildly with her hand, offended at the mere thought, and some of the dark reddish orange liquid splashed on the creamy caramel of the sofa.

“Oh dear.” She pursed her lips in a gesture of disapproval, glaring at the sofa as if she was blaming it for being too easy to stain. Her eyes were hazy and now Blue was sure she was tipsy. Maura chugged down the remaining of her drink in one long gulp and stood up, heading for the kitchen. “Oh and,” she turned around at the doorway, giving her daughter a strict look, “for the love of God and Satan and Saint Mary, do not let him tell you he’s too big for a condom.”

Blue only rolled her eyes.

Maura had always been free-spirited and open-minded and aware of teenage hormones so Blue received the “wait for someone you love” speech rather than every parent's typical “I forbid you to have sex with anyone” threat. In any case, Maura never forbade her daughter to do anything on principal alone. It was unsurprising she didn't forbid this.

Not that she knew what Blue was doing.

Free-spirited as she was, Blue suspected she might have a few words to say about the state of her relationship with a certain group of Raven boys if she ever found out. So Blue ensured she wouldn’t.

The catch was, Blue didn’t think she was breaking Maura’s lazily and hastily setup rules. Because she did love all of her boys - even angry and barbaric Ronan Lynch, even pompous and presidential Richard Gansey III, even silent and sullen Adam Parrish, and especially cheerful and kind Noah Czerny.

So she did not love them in the romantic way; the way, she suspected, Maura meant the word “love.” So it was only a convenient friends with benefits arrangement, magnified to five people instead of two. Blue didn’t mind. In fact, she rather enjoyed having all the benefits of four sexual partners she could trust and none of the complications of a romantic entanglement. It was, she thought, one of the best decisions she’s made in her life.

She struggled to remember that feeling as Noah struggled with his pants, half naked in her room.

“You’re too slow.” Blue hit his arm, still bare without his shirt on. With one leg in his pants, Noah fought bravely with his clothes, attempting to put his other leg through the hole without falling, but Blue was impatient. Mainly because she thought she heard the front door opening earlier but also because she had to get ready for her shift at Nino’s, a pizza place made especially for boys from Aglionby Academy, unfortunately paying too well to quit it, and also because it was in her nature to be impatient.

“You’re too violent,” Noah retorted with a faux wounded look. His lips turned down in his trademark puppy dog pout which didn’t work on her only because it was fake. “Don’t rush me.”

“But I am rushing you. I think I heard someone downstairs.”

Noah gave her an eye roll; Blue narrowed hers. “You’re not gonna get caught.”

 _"We. We_ are not going to get caught because you’re going to hurry up and get dressed and leave so I can get ready for work. Because if I get caught, I’m dragging you down with me.”

Noah pouted some more. His blonde hair was tousled, messy from Blue’s pillow and her hand insistently and sometimes violently tugging on it. His chest was adorned with small red scratches and teeth marks. Blue’s unwillingness to kiss any of them did not hinder any teeth or mouth action below the face.

“Where’s the solidarity?”

“Buried under six feet of frustration.”

“Well, what are you frustrated about? Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.” She hit his chest again, this time with his own shirt. “I want you to leave.”

“Rude,” Noah muttered, his hand mockingly placed on his heart, but his voice almost gleeful. Under Blue’s persisting glare, he took his shirt and put on his remaining clothes but when he started towards the door, she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“What? I thought you wanted me to go.”

She pointed towards the window.

It took him a moment to understand.

“Oh. Oh, you can’t be serious. Blue, come on.” His voice was a whine, designed to tug on her heartstrings. Blue was adamant. She knew these boys too well to let herself fall for their tricks anymore.

“I think it’s just Orla but I don’t want to risk it,” she shrugged. In fact, it would only be worse if it was Orla downstairs. She would take one look at Noah and his mess of a hair and red cheeks and gleaming eyes and know what had been going on in Blue’s room only minutes before. Her cousin was crazily intuitive when it came to boys and relationships, a skill she mercilessly milked to maintain her psychic persona.

“Relax,” Blue added, to appease Noah’s wide eyed fear. “Just slither down the tree and you’ll be fine. It’s not high. If Gansey managed to keep his bones intact, I think you can too.”

“Oh, that’s reassuring,” Noah replied with sarcasm that could only be Ronan’s influence. “Really reassuring.”

“Don’t be a crybaby.” Blue gave him a cheeky grin, pulling the sheet wrapped around her tighter when it began to slip through her fingers. She didn’t get dressed yet only because she wanted to take a shower before work and she was anxious for Noah to go so she could get on with her schedule and quit worrying about Orla’s possible presence downstairs. Really, it was unfair to blame Noah for running late because it was her fault and she knew it. She was aware they wouldn’t have a lot of alone time when she booty called Noah earlier but the desire to blow off some steam before Nino’s - a place of never ending frustration - was too tempting to pass up. She must have miscalculated the time it took Noah to get here, have a quickie and the time it took Orla to arrive home from her weekly yoga.

With a long suffering sigh, Noah yielded, _"Fine,_ but if I break my leg, I’m sending the hospital bills to you." That was a lie because he undoubtedly had insurance and more than enough money to cover a treatment. He leaned in, stepped closer, as if to kiss her, and Blue instinctively took a step back.

 _"Noah,”_ she warned him in a tone that vaguely reminded her of, what Ronan called, Gansey’s Dad Voice. She wondered when she picked that up.

He winced, either because of hearing that tone from her mouth or because of his slip up. “Sorry.”

And he did look guilty. Blue was notorious for not wanting to kiss any of her Raven boys on the lips, for reasons she was yet to tell anyone, despite having no problem kissing them in other places. No one else shared her abstinence and while neither of them understood it, they respected her request.

“Ronan likes it when I kiss him goodbye,” Noah continued, an explanation, apologetic. “Sometimes I have a hard time keeping all of your whims and preferences separate.”

Blue felt a pang of guilt. Noah made it his strange mission to please everyone while never allowing them to do the same for him. Blue didn’t even know what he liked and what he didn’t, although not for lack of inquiring; he always remained evasive when approached with the topic. Surely everyone has preferences, Blue always told him, but she never got a straight answer.

Noah was what they wanted him to be. The other boys were different.

She and Adam collided a lot, both of their thirst for control making them an unlikely, furious pair. It was often more of a power struggle, rather than sex, the thrill of seeing who conquers who more exciting than the stirring feeling of skin against skin and bodies joined. Seldom did she leave a sex date with Adam unbruised and relaxed. She left it worked up and frustrated and unbalanced and sore. Sometimes, it hurt to walk after, for a while. It was always rough and always wild but that was okay because that was exactly what she wanted when she went to Adam.

Gansey had the opposite effect on her. For all his kinglike qualities, he didn’t seem to want to be a leader in bed, which was just fine for Blue. Their desires didn’t clash; they completed each other. Gansey, Blue found, liked to renounce all control when they entered the bedroom. He liked to be the submissive party and, shamefully, she took advantage of that every time she could. She often went to Gansey after an encounter with Adam; he calmed her, both mind and body. The trust he placed in her soothed her riled up self.

She wasn’t sure what Ronan liked and what he did not - it was an unspoken but generally well-known fact that Ronan was not at all attracted to Blue or the female population - but she was sure he must have his own preferences too. Submissive or dominant, top or bottom. (Blue bet it was bottom.)

Noah was a mystery. Fluid and flexible, always preferring what his partner wanted him to prefer, always going along with everything. It was somehow not as satisfying as with Gansey; she never knew if he truly liked what they were doing, if it was something he wanted to be doing too. Though, she supposed, he would say something if he felt uncomfortable but Blue wished she could return the favor for all his efforts and make him feel good for once.

 _Be open about what you like and don’t like,_ was their seventh rule, made by Blue, strengthened by Gansey. Noah never was.

He was breaking the rule, Blue sometimes thought, but that possibly wasn’t the right approach to get him to open up. She was still figuring out her tactic.

Now she pushed at Noah’s chest, clothed, thankfully, ushering him towards the window. “It’s forgiven, just go. Be careful,” were her last words before shutting the window closed after Noah. She watched for a second as he descended down the old, spreading beech tree, carefully moving through the thick branches, making a jump when he was close to the ground. He gave her the thumbs up once he was safely on his feet and one last grin before disappearing down the street, moving towards his bright red sports car.

 _The car,_ she thought with a wince. She completely forgot about that. It was a hard thing to miss, for its color and expensiveness and size. It was an Aglionby car, if there ever was one, the only object so shiny on a street of poor families. Orla, or whoever was downstairs, had to have seen it. That in itself wouldn’t be a problem but having to explain when and why and where did Noah sneak out of the house might be.

Blue had no adequate answer if asked.

x

Adam was pretending.

He was pretending this small cup of coffee was doing a great job at keeping him awake and he was not too tired to hang out with his friend at Nino’s tonight. He was pretending he was not that hungry at all and the delicious smell of salami pizza was not making his mouth water and he was not at all envious of the rich toppings on Gansey’s and Ronan’s slices. He was pretending Gansey was not trying to catch his eye to ask him a question wrapped in a meaningful look, pretending he would not find pity there.

It was getting increasingly difficult, not to mention impolite, to keep avoiding Gansey’s stare after Ronan and Noah left the table, leaving just the two of them alone. Adam glanced around Nino’s to locate Blue, wondering when her shift was ending; he could not find her which meant she was either in the kitchen or at the back changing her uniform, ready to join their table and make the atmosphere less awkward.

He hadn't ordered anything today besides this poor excuse of a coffee. His reason had been, “I’m not hungry.” In reality, his payment at the shop was late and reasonably, he had to save some money till he received it. It meant he couldn't afford pizza right now. This wasn't the first time and wouldn’t be the last and a few months ago it wouldn’t have mattered - no, it would have mattered. But it wouldn’t have been vital. Now though, living on his own above St. Agnes Church, every penny counted. If his payment was late, even if only at one of his jobs, it was trouble. It meant giving up on such luxuries as pizza at Nino’s and breakfast for a few days to be able to pay rent. Shelter, Adam figured, was more important than food.

His stomach disagreed with a grumble, however.

Adam fervently hoped Gansey didn't hear it, his cheeks coloring red in his embarrassment. _Where was Blue?_

Adam knew Gansey didn’t buy the lie he told earlier - and nor did anybody else. Without even looking up, Adam could sense Gansey's eyes yo-yoing back and forth between Adam’s nonexistent plate and Noah’s.

The situation with Noah was different. It was not that he didn’t have the money to eat pizza with them, it was that he didn’t seem to want to. In fact, Noah never seemed to want to eat anything at all - besides gelato and chocolate cake, that is, two things Noah was inexplicably and endlessly fond of. Adam didn’t think they counted as real food and Gansey shared that opinion, but Noah must be eating something besides gelato and cake from time to time because he was alive and well, and though thin, more or less healthy looking.

Gansey wasn’t so sure sometimes. “Do you think he has an eating disorder?” he asked them once when Noah left for the bathroom, having ordered nothing but apple juice as per usual. “Do you think he’s anorexic?”

“He doesn’t look unhealthily thin,” Ronan retorted, sliding his gaze over to Adam, Adam ignoring it dutifully. _Unhealthily thin like me, you mean?_ He could still feel Ronan’s eyes on him, challenging, when Gansey answered, but he didn’t rise to the bait.

It was a discussion they had about Noah at least once a month, _(“Should we be seriously worried, should we get him professional help?”)_ and it left Adam wondering if they had similar discussions about him when he wasn’t around, only the questions being, _“How do we shove help down poor, penniless Adam's throat and how do we make him responsive to it?”_

Adam finally met Gansey’s gaze with a sort of quiet, cold definiteness, ready for a confrontation if that was what it came to. He wished it wasn’t what it came to. He felt tired and hungry. Miserably, he recalled the last thing he ate - a banana for lunch. It wasn’t thoroughly satisfactory.

Gansey opened his mouth and closed it, perhaps just as unwilling to fight as Adam. He already knew from experience where this conversation would lead to; it’s a play they acted out many times. Adam was sick of the script. He couldn’t keep repeating the lines given to him.

He was spared, mercifully, by Blue throwing herself into Ronan’s empty seat at last. She took a moment to melt into seat with her eyes closed, shake off all the unpleasantness of her shift, and then she looked around the restaurant. “Where’s Ronan and Noah?”

“In the bathroom,” Adam answered because Gansey was coughing into his hands uncomfortably. For all his grown up maturity, Gansey was but a little boy when the topic of sex came up in casual conversation. Not so much a little boy when he sucked Adam dry. Sometimes this duality amused Adam.

“In the bathroom?” puzzled Blue. She looked worn out too, Adam noted. It was a discouraging realization since school was a couple of weeks away and with it, constant exhaustion would only get worse. They were all entering their final year; late night homework and cramming for exams was just about to begin. “What are they, - oh. _Ew._ In the bathroom? What are we, animals?”

“Declan was here,” Gansey offered as an explanation and Blue nodded with a grimace. It was a better alternative to let Ronan cool down in a manner that didn’t hurt anyone.

Gansey changed the topic to one more agreeable for his delicate tastes. “How is the wedding planning coming along?”

Blue’s frown deepened.

“Awful. I hate it. I guess it’s going good if we’re looking at it objectively but,” she rolled her eyes, “all the dress fittings and cake shopping and mom’s constant whining is driving me up the wall.” She bit her lower lip as she released a regretful little sigh, playing with the blue straw of Ronan’s untouched coke. She pulled it out and pushed it in, straightened it and twisted it.

“Don’t get me wrong, she’s not so bad. But the whole ordeal is a mess. She doesn’t know what kind of flowers she wants. She doesn’t want to wear shoes to the ceremony. Orla doesn’t like her bridesmaid dress. Calla doesn’t like a male specimen living with us. And Mr. Gray isn’t of any help. I mean, Jesus Christ, they’re just cakes for God’s sake!”

Blue suddenly threw her hands out in frustration and hit Gansey square in the chest. She didn’t seem to notice or didn’t want to notice and Gansey let out a small “oomph” but continued to nod unhelpfully. _Sometimes,_ he said once, _it’s just easier to let Blue rant without a word._ It’s a lesson they have all learned by now.

“I’m never getting married,” she finished with an angry blow and looked so certain of this fact that neither boys dared to argue.

“Who would want to marry you anyway?” Ronan had arrived back with Noah in tow and he was now pushing Blue away and into Gansey’s left side so he could reclaim his original seat.

Blue gave him the glare she reserved only for Ronan. It was fierce and ten times scarier than her regular one and totally useless on Ronan. “Says the guy who’s probably going to die alone surrounded by a legion of ravens.”

Noah laughed delightedly. Ronan did not dignify the comment with an answer; he was busy looking at something with a predatory scowl, Adam realized. Something straight ahead for him and behind Adam’s back, making it impossible to look subtly. Adam quelled his curiosity. Ronan was angry at too many people and inanimate objects to make this murderous glare truly interesting.

“Noah, don’t,” Gansey advised suddenly in a weary, reprimanding voice and Blue groaned. When Adam took his eyes off Ronan, Noah was grinning mischievously, holding his phone in his hand. Adam understood at once.

“Put that thing away, you nomophobic,” Ronan glowered, his dislike for modern technology, and phones especially, made worse by Noah’s almost pathological obsession to snapshot his, and by proxy, all of their lives.

“I have no idea what that means,” Noah deadpanned, decidedly not putting his phone away.

“It’s what they call you crazies addicted to your cell phones. I looked it up just for you.”

“That sounds like an awfully lot of effort for you, Ronan Lynch,” Blue told him but Ronan had already tuned out, or pretended to, as he often did when Blue spoke.

“Just one picture, cross my heart and hope to die,” Noah promised, pleading and earnest and taking a photo of the contents of their table without waiting for an answer.

“An intervention is ripe,” Ronan muttered distantly as his stare drifted again. Adam felt itchy to look, itchy to leave, itchy to lean his head on the table and sleep. He wanted to return to St. Agnes, check the shelves for a banana or a candy bar or a miraculous sighting of more substantial food, sleep.

Blue yawned. It was contagious, as all yawns were, and soon Gansey followed suit and then Adam, who was already on the verge of one anyway. Blue said, “I’m calling it a day, I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” and Adam was relieved as everyone seemed to get up and head for the door. Noah was still typing away on his phone, gleeful and too awake in contrast to the sluggish fog in Adam’s brain. He kept one eye on the screen as he shrugged his jacket on, while Gansey offered to take Blue home and she, uncharacteristically, probably due to the circles under her eyes, accepted. Ronan charged ahead, out of the restaurant before anyone else, no goodbyes spoken to anyone. There was something angry about his expression - but that word was inadequate. There was always something angry about his expression. Now, he looked... charged.

Adam followed, his eyes on the exit. There was a fifteen minute drive ahead of him and if he ate, showered and brushed his teeth under thirty, he could be asleep by - Someone bumped into him. Adam, a hazy moment later, recognized the sharp edged cheekbones, spiked hair and hollowed-out eyes as property of one Joseph Kavinsky, Aglionby student, Henrietta forger, street racer.

Kavinsky was wild, heedless; without rules and without morals. The sort of terrifying that was always in your face. There was nothing subtle about the sharpness of his teeth; he could bite you in two and he wanted you to know it. He was your number one gateway to underground, lawless Henrietta and Adam wanted nothing to do with it.

He had his fair share of wild, terrifying people. He was not a fan of Kavinsky.

Kavinsky said, “Watch where you’re going, Parrish,” in an offensive, grating voice, a lazy smile curving on his full lips. Adam was in no mood to point out that Kavinsky bumped into Adam. If Kavinsky wanted a confrontation, he just missed his person.

Adam leveled the other boy with a blank stare that should, to all intents and purposes, convey more of his cold disinterest than any words he could say. He didn’t wait for a comeback.

Once he was inside his tricolored, not new but relatively new to him, car, Adam took out his too thin of a wallet. He counted the contents, for the third time that day; too little, not enough, painfully aware of this hard truth. Impulsively, he shoved the thing into the backseat, out of sight. Counting did nothing but torment him. He had supplies at St. Agnes sufficient for a few days, maybe a week even, and money to last him a few days more after, and then it was due to receive his late paycheck which was promised to be given to him at the end of next week. If he was fortunate, he would get through this week with just a little more effort than usual.

Adam was rarely fortunate. That worried him.

A knock on the glass drew his attention right as he was about to power the car. Hand on the ignition key, he rolled down the window. It was Ronan. He was holding something in his hand - the bag was decorated with the red lettered word Nino’s and its trademark undetermined symbol. Ronan had asked two of his pizza slices to be packaged when ordering and Adam had assumed it was intended for later consumption or Chainsaw or those cats Ronan sometimes fed outside Monmouth or even to prank Gansey by placing them under his bed and letting them rot and begin to smell. It was hard to tell with Ronan.

But now he thrust the bag towards Adam, dropping it in his lap with defiance and without ceremony - not something Adam expected. Ronan's face was a storm, ready for a fight.

“Uhm...” Adam raised his eyes from the bag to Ronan. Some deep part of his mind understood what Ronan expected of him but instead he waited for an explanation. Surely, he didn’t think, -

Ronan shrugged as if Adam had spoken aloud. “Just take it. Don’t argue with me.”

Adam didn’t want to argue. He avoided a conflict with Gansey all night, stepped out of Kavinsky’s way when the possibility of one arose, and he wasn’t about to make an exception for Ronan now, of all people. No matter how easy it was to pick a fight with Ronan. Not tonight.

Tomorrow maybe, when, if Adam’s calculations were right, it would be due for another quarrel with Ronan, simply because Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch did not go more than three days without disagreeing on a matter or another.

Adam sighed. The two slices of pizza felt comfortingly warm in his lap even through its paper bag wrapper. “This isn’t going to be a regular thing.”

“Whatever, Parrish,” replied Ronan. The timbre of fake indolence was unmistakable. Adam might have responded but Ronan left no room for it, turning his back to Adam, stomping to his car. Moonlight danced across his frame as Adam watched; his tattoos, impossibly, looked like they were shifting in the dark. A different shape with each step.

Adam was glad when he drove away. He didn’t know what he would have said if Ronan stayed. A _thank you_ might have been in order but Adam knew those burning words would have never willingly left his throat, and, he knew, Ronan didn’t want them anyway.

Adam didn’t know how to be grateful when he spent all his life unresponsive to aid.

 _But this,_ Adam thought as he put the paper bag on the passenger’s seat, rolled up the window, pulled out of the parking lot, _was not an aid._ It would have been an aid coming from Gansey. Noble, lofty Gansey, always ready to help, always wanting to bestow Adam with gifts. He expected nothing in return, would accept nothing as compensation. Adam didn’t want that kind of help.

This was different. _This,_ Adam thought, _was a favor._ Something he could pay back, later when Ronan drove his BMW to the garage to install an update or fix something broken after a race. Adam would find a way to give it something extra. Ronan would not complain. The debt would be paid.

x

“Ah,” Blue let out a grumble as Gansey pulled up on the curb besides the familiar little blue house. 300 Fox Way, as it was often referred to, stood bright and homely and proud to their right. Thought infinitesimally small, Gansey knew, besides Blue Sargent, it also housed her eccentric family and countless friends of family and friends of friends of family. The hows of it was lost on Gansey but this mystery was certainly part of its charm. Like something out of a fantasy book, 300 Fox Way’s magic was its secrets and its strange fluctuating size. Always alive with energy, always buzzing with warmth and excitement and _life,_ it was everything Gansey loved and everything he would have wanted for himself.

Blue, at the moment, did not seem to share his sentiments. Her Henrietta accent, which ordinarily sounded like home to Gansey, was laced with venom. She was glaring out the window. “Back to the madhouse.”

Gansey considered the house. Blue had once told him that if he showed up at their threshold at any given time on any given day, someone would always open the door because someone was always awake and someone was always making a noise. Gansey believed her. To him, it seemed delightful; to her, it was tiring at times.

“Is it really that bad?” He didn’t know much about wedding planning but it must be hectic because his sister was a part-time wedding planner and his sister liked hectic.

Blue turned to him, shrugging. “I guess not,” she said, looking pained to admit it. “I just have other things... bothering me, on top of this.”

Now that was interesting. Not interesting in a way that was pleasant to hear but interesting because he hadn’t known something, besides hectic wedding planning, was bothering Blue. He hadn’t picked up on her discomfort, or perhaps he’d mistaken it for exhaustion. It made him uneasy to imagine one of his friends upset or sad without his knowledge, him powerless to help.

He set about to remedy this. “What things?” It was a careful prodding in a gentle tone. Blue, he knew from experience, would say only as much as she wanted to; trying too hard would not be taken as concern but as a violation of her rights and wishes to keep the issue to herself. She would pull her walls up and storm away in a blaze of fury like the hurricane she was.

“Things,” she said vaguely. It was not quite an answer but it was not unwillingness to share either. It was contemplation of what to share.

She looked ahead, out the windshield, out at the winding street ahead of them decorated with dark, drowsing houses. So unlike warm, alive, vibrant 300 Fox Way.

She said, “Things like... college. And senior year. And leaving Henrietta.” She paused. Her breath was a painful sigh. “Leaving all of you.”

Gansey’s heart stuttered. College, leaving Henrietta, leaving his friends - it was unthinkable, unimaginable, wrong. How ungrateful he’d have to be; to be abandon the only place which took him in, accepted him as its own, gave him a home and family. But how foolish he’d have to be to stay rooted in one place, untouched by time and still as a statue, when everyone else around him was moving and changing.

And they would be. Moving away and further into their life; Gansey knew that without a doubt. He’d have to too, he realized.

It was too soon to worry about this. He told Blue as much but she gave him a look. The _“Don’t Richard Campbell Gansey III at me”_ look. Her favorite one to use at him.

“Oh, don’t you think I know this? Try telling that to my heart.” She huffed and reached for the seat belt to unbuckle it. Gansey knew she was done with the conversation and he had, as always, driven her away by saying the wrong thing. She left him with a goodbye but gave him no time to return it. Striding towards her house, - too slowly to be angry, too forcefully to be peaceful - Gansey watched her and mused, -

It was impossible to be so removed from and in touch with Blue Sargent at the same time. To be on the same wavelength as her, more so than the others - yet not. He often thought the two of them saw the same picture when they looked at the world but the colors were all wrong.

He would have liked to see her perspective, her colors, once. He imagined they were brighter than his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i must confess, i put in the _warm, alive, vibrant_ line (from the bluesey snippet, yes) unconsciously before i even knew what i was doing and when i realized, it was just too good to cut it out. it wanted to be there so it stayed there. i don't know when you can expect chapter 2, for now i'm gonna see if anyone is even interested in this story so yeah.


End file.
